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Blogumulus by Roy Tanck and marewa

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Jul 21, 2009

[T-N]Kamen_Rider_Decade_24SD[7EA81C4D].avi.torrent

[T-N]Fuuma_No_Kojirou_Live02-04.torrent

[T-N]Fuuma_No_Kojirou_Live05-07.torrent

[T-N]Fuuma_No_Kojirou_Live08-10.torrent

[T-N]Fuuma_No_Kojirou_Live.torrent



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WD Caviar Black

Mar 7, 2009

WD Caviar Black
SATA Hard Drives

1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM

Maximum performance for power computing.

Power your PC with our top-of-the-line high-capacity drives.

Capacities:
1 TB 750 GB 640 GB 500 GB

WD Caviar Black drives combine a high performance electronics architecture with a rock solid mechanical architecture to deliver the perfect storage solution for your fully-loaded PC or maxed out gaming machine. Cool drive operation, no-touch head technology, and leading-edge vibration protection ensure enhanced reliability and sustained data throughput. And we back it all up with a 5-year limited warranty.

High Performance Electronics Architecture
# Dual processor - Twice the processing power to maximize performance.
# 32 MB cache - Bigger, faster cache means faster performance.
Rock Solid Mechanical Architecture
# StableTrac™ - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
# NoTouch™ ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
5 Year Limited Warranty
Massive Capacity - WD Caviar Black SATA drives are available in capacities up to 1 TB.
Compatible - We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab™ and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.

How this WD hard drive protects your data

* Data Lifeguard™ is an exclusive set of data protection features, including shock protection, an environmental protection system and real-time embedded error detection and repair. WD's Data Lifeguard technology automatically finds, isolates, and repairs problems that may develop over the life of a hard drive.
* Data Lifeguard Tools™ are software utilities designed for WD hard drives that work with the embedded Data Lifeguard features to make hard drive installation,diagnostics and repair both simple and worry-free. (Download Data Lifeguard Tools)
* ShockGuard™ instantaneously protects the hard drive against damage from bumps and vibrations while it is running. This technology enables WD Caviar drives to achieve industry-leading shock specifications.



Ideal For

Power computing applications such as multimedia, video and photo editing, and maxed out gaming computers.

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WD Caviar Green

WD Caviar Green
SATA Hard Drives

2 TB, 32 MB Cache, SATA 3 Gb/s

Cool, quiet, eco-friendly.

WD Caviar Green drives use less power and support quieter, cooler-running desktop PCs and external storage devices.



32 MB Cache 16 MB Cache

Capacities:
2 TB 1.5 TB 1 TB

As hard drive capacities increase, the power required to run those drives increases as well. WD Caviar Green drives make it possible for energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.

Reduced power consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek™, NoTouch™, and IntelliPower™ technologies.
Helps enable eco-friendly PCs - WD Caviar Green drives yield an average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over standard desktop drives making it possible for our energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.
Cool and quiet - GreenPower™ technology yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics for ultra-quiet PCs and external drives.
Massive capacity - Capacities up to 2 TB offer the most available capacity for storage-intensive programs and space-hungry operating systems, like Window Vista®, with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.
Perfect for external drives - External drive manufacturers can eliminate the need for a fan in a high-capacity product with a WD Caviar Green drive, the coolest and quietest in its class.
IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.
IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration. View demo >
NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - Employs PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density.
StableTrac™ - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations. (2 TB models only)
Low power spin-up - WD Caviar Green drives consume less current during startup allowing lower peak loads.
Advanced power technology - Electronic components deliver best-in-class low power consumption for reduced power requirements and increased reliability.
Ideal For

Environmentally friendly PCs and external storage requiring lower power consumption and cool, quiet operation.

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WD Caviar Blue

WD Caviar Blue
SATA Hard Drives

750 GB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM

Performance and reliability for everyday computing.

With SATA and EIDE interfaces, cache sizes ranging from 2 MB to 16 MB, WD Caviar Blue drives offer a full range of performance features. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Caviar Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability.


Interface:
SATA 3 Gb/s EIDE 100 MB/s

Cache Size:
16 MB 8 MB 2 MB

Capacities:
750 GB 640 GB 500 GB 400 GB 320 GB 250 GB 160 GB 80 GB 40 GB

Compatibility Summary >>

To make drive selection simple, we've gathered all our popular WD Caviar SE16, WD Caviar SE, and WD Caviar drives under one umbrella we call WD Caviar Blue. Built to Western Digital's awarding winning quality standards, these drives are available in a full range of performance features.

Interface
EIDE - Enhanced integrated drive electronics (EIDE), also called Parallel ATA (PATA), hard drives have been the standard in the computer industry for more than 10 years.

SATA - Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives are quickly becoming the new standard. Motherboard manufacturers now include SATA inputs on their boards. Because of their considerably narrower cables, SATA hard drives provide increased airflow and less clutter and in the computer system compared to EIDE drives.

The performance difference - EIDE drives support data transfer rates up to 100MB/sec, and all WD Caviar Blue SATA drive support 3 Gb/s transfer rates.

How to choose - Our handy Interface Guide can help you make your selection.
Cache - WD Caviar Blue is available in 2 MB, 8 MB, and 16 MB cache sizes. Bigger cache memory yields faster performance.
Capacity - We offer drives ranging from 40 GB to 750 GB. Pick the biggest capacity your budget will allow. You can never have too much storage space.
Reliability - We understand the importance of your data, and we are committed to protecting that data with exceptionally reliable products, advanced data protection technology and superior customer support.
Cool - Keeping the drive cool enhances reliability. WD continues to develop new and innovative ways to keep drives cool while they are operating.
Quiet - The technology that Tom's Hardware Guide called "very fast and nearly silent" is used throughout this family of drives. Our WhisperDrive™ technology minimizes noise to levels near the threshold of human hearing. To cut seek noise, SoftSeek™ technology streamlines read/write seeking algorithms, resulting in more efficient operation.
NoTouch™ ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit. (Available on 120 GB capacities and above)
IntelliSeek™ - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. (Available on 120 GB capacities and above) [View demo]
Compatible - We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab™ and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.

How this WD hard drive protects your data

* Data Lifeguard™ is an exclusive set of data protection features, including shock protection, an environmental protection system and real-time embedded error detection and repair. WD's Data Lifeguard technology automatically finds, isolates, and repairs problems that may develop over the life of a hard drive.
* Data Lifeguard Tools™ are software utilities designed for WD hard drives that work with the embedded Data Lifeguard features to make hard drive installation,diagnostics and repair both simple and worry-free. (Download Data Lifeguard Tools)
* ShockGuard™ instantaneously protects the hard drive against damage from bumps and vibrations while it is running. This technology enables WD Caviar drives to achieve industry-leading shock specifications.



Ideal For

Family and business computing

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System Mechanic 8

Jan 28, 2009

http://rs500tg2.rapidshare.com/files/176642640/3915906/System.Mechanic.Professional._8.5.2.4.Incld.Keygen.rar

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Steganographic techniques

Jan 3, 2009

Modern steganography entered the world in 1985 with the advent of the Personal Computer applied to classical steganography problems. Development following that was slow, but has since taken off, based upon the number of 'stego' programs available.

* Concealing messages within the lowest bits of noisy images or sound files.
* Concealing data within encrypted data. The data to be concealed is first encrypted before being used to overwrite part of a much larger block of encrypted data.
* Chaffing and winnowing
* Mimic functions convert one file to have the statistical profile of another.

This can thwart statistical methods that help brute-force attacks identify the right solution in a ciphertext-only attack.
* Invisible ink
* Null ciphers
* Concealed messages in tampered executable files, exploiting redundancy in the i386 instruction set
* Embedded pictures in video material (optionally played at slower or faster speed).
* A new steganographic technique involves injecting imperceptible delays to packets sent over the network from the keyboard. Delays in keypresses in some applications (telnet or remote desktop software) can mean a delay in packets, and the delays in the packets can be used to encode data.
* Content-Aware Steganography hides information in the semantics a human user assigns to a datagram; these systems offer security against a non-human adversary/warden.
* BPCS-Steganography - a very large embedding capacity steganography.
* Blog-Steganography. Messages are fractionalyzed and the (encrypted) pieces are added as comments of orphaned web-logs (or pin boards on social network platforms). In this case the selection of blogs is the symmetric key that sender and recipient are using. The carrier of the hidden message is the whole blogosphere.

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History of Steganography

Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no-one apart from the sender and intended recipient even realizes there is a hidden message. By contrast, cryptography obscures the meaning of a message, but it does not conceal the fact that there is a message. Today, the term steganography includes the concealment of digital information within computer files. For example, the sender might start with an ordinary-looking image file, then adjust the color of every 100th pixel to correspond to a letter in the alphabet—a change so subtle that someone who isn't actively looking for it is unlikely to notice it.
The word steganography is of Greek origin and means "covered, or hidden writing". Its ancient origins can be traced back to 440 BC. Herodotus mentions two examples of steganography in The Histories of Herodotus. Demaratus sent a warning about a forthcoming attack to Greece by writing it on a wooden panel and covering it in wax. Wax tablets were in common use then as re-usable writing surfaces, sometimes used for shorthand. Another ancient example is that of Histiaeus, who shaved the head of his most trusted slave and tattooed a message on it. After his hair had grown the message was hidden. The purpose was to instigate a revolt against the Persians. Later, Johannes Trithemius published the book Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a grimoire.

Generally, a steganographic message will appear to be something else: a picture, an article, a shopping list, or some other message. This apparent message is the covertext. For instance, a message may be hidden by using invisible ink between the visible lines of innocuous documents.

The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that messages do not attract attention to themselves, to messengers, or to recipients. An unhidden coded message, no matter how unbreakable it is, will arouse suspicion and may in itself be incriminating, as in countries where encryption is illegal. Often, steganography and cryptography are used together to ensure security of the covert message.

Electronic communications can include steganographic coding inside of a transport layer, such as a file, or a protocol, such as UDP. Media files are ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size, and are usually compressed either losslessly, as with FLAC or PNG, or lossily, as with JPEG images, MPEG video, or MP3 audio.

A steganographic message (the plaintext) is often first encrypted by some traditional means, producing a ciphertext. Then, a covertext is modified in some way to contain the ciphertext, resulting in stegotext. For example, the letter size, spacing, typeface, or other characteristics of a covertext can be manipulated to carry the hidden message; only the recipient (who must know the technique used) can recover the message and then decrypt it. Francis Bacon developed Bacon's cipher as such a technique.

by:wikipedia

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Apple files 'swipe-gesture' patent application

Dec 27, 2008

While children were nestled all snug in their beds, Apple apparently had visions of improved touch-screens in its innovative head.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed a patent application from Apple, dated Christmas Day, for a swipe-gesture system to be used on touch-screen keyboards. It would allow a person to "perform certain functions using swipes across the key area rather than tapping particular keys," according to the patent application, authored by Wayne Westerman.

For example, the application explains that leftward, rightward, upward, and downward swipes might be assigned to inserting a space, backspacing, shifting, or inserting a carriage return.

MacRumors, which was first to point out the patent application, notes that Apple sees swipe gestures being used on top of the iPhone's on-screen keyboard to provide people with quick access to common keys. Ars Technica's Infinite Loop, which like MacRumors explains the patent in more detail, likens the technology to a "Palm Graffiti-like interpretation layer to the standard iPhone keyboard."

Here's a sample gesture depicted in the filing:



















A downward swipe might be assigned to 'return.'
(Credit: U.S Patent and Trademark Office)

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Google, Microsoft, Apple sued over preview icons

A Michigan-based networking company on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Google, Microsoft, and Apple, alleging that all three tech giants violated a patent it owns on the use of document-preview icons--or thumbnails--in operating systems.

In the suit (PDF), Cygnus Systems targets Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Vista and Internet Explorer 8, and Apple's iPhone, Safari, and Mac OS X as patent infringers. Apple uses the patent-protected technology in its Finder and Cover Flow Mac OS X features, the lawsuit claims.










Cygnus describes the technology covered by the patent as "methods and systems for accessing one or more computer files via a graphical icon, wherein the graphical icon includes an image of a selected portion or portions of one or more computer files."

E-mails seeking comment from Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Cygnus' attorney were not immediately returned.

The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona, where company owner Gregory Swartz lives, according to PCWorld.

Cygnus was granted the patent in March 2008, according to the lawsuit, although it first applied for it back in 2001 as a continuation to a 1998 application, according to Ars Technica, which appeared to report the case first.
Cygnus is seeking damages and a permanent injunction to prevent further alleged infringement. It has also indicated that it might go after other companies as defendants.

Posted by Michelle Meyers

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Windows 7 build 6956 vs. Windows XP SP3

Dec 23, 2008

Several of you have asked me to add data for Windows XP to my Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista benchmark post. Well, you asked for it!

Rather than build this into a large post, I’ll just post the data here. For any background check out the original post.

Bottom line: Windows 7 build 6956 beats Windows XP SP3 in each of the tests.

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

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Windows 7

Dec 5, 2008

Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the next release of Microsoft
Windows, an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs.

Microsoft stated in 2007 that it is planning Windows 7 development for a three-year time frame starting after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista, but that the final release date will be determined by product quality.

Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade with the goal of being fully compatible with existing device drivers, applications, and hardware. Presentations given by the company in 2008 have focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, most notably Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are no longer included with the operating system; they are instead offered separately as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.

Development

History

In 2000, Microsoft started the planning to follow up Windows XP and its server counterpart Windows Server 2003 (both codenamed Whistler) with a major new release of Windows that was codenamed Blackcomb (both codenames refer to the Whistler-Blackcomb resort). This new version was at that time scheduled for a 2005 release.

Major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. In this context, a feature mentioned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for Blackcomb was "a pervasive typing line that will recognize the sentence that [the user is] typing in."

Later, Blackcomb was delayed and an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn", was announced for a 2003 release. By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb, including WinFS, the Desktop Window Manager, and new versions of system components built on the .NET Framework. After the 2003 "Summer of Worms", where three major viruses − Blaster, Sobig, and Welchia − exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period, Microsoft changed its development priorities, putting some of Longhorn's major development work on hold in order to develop new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Development of Longhorn was also "reset" in September 2004.

Naming

As major feature work on Windows Vista wound down in early 2006, Blackcomb was renamed Vienna.[10] However, following the release of Windows Vista, it was confirmed by Microsoft on 20 July 2007 that "the internal name for the next version of the Windows Client OS"[2] was Windows 7, a name that had been reported by some sources months before.[10] On 13 October 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system.[11][12]

On 13 October 2008 Mike Nash, Microsoft's vice-president of Windows product management said:
"The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore Windows 7 just makes sense.

Coming up with an all-new 'aspirational' name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.

Numbering this version of Windows as "7" has confused many users, so on 14 October 2008 Nash clarified his earlier remarks, saying:
"The very first release of Windows was Windows 1.0, the second wahttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1894637732417024313s Windows 2.0, the third Windows 3.0. Here's where things get a little more complicated. Following Windows 3.0 was Windows NT which was code versioned as Windows 3.1. Then came Windows 95, which was code versioned as Windows 4.0. Then, Windows 98, 98 SE and Windows Millennium each shipped as 4.0.1998, 4.10.2222, and 4.90.3000, respectively. So we're counting all 9x versions as being 4.0. Windows 2000 code was 5.0 and then we shipped Windows XP as 5.1, even though it was a major release we didn't want to change code version numbers to maximize application compatibility. That brings us to Windows Vista, which is 6.0. So we see Windows 7 as our next logical significant release and 7th in the family of Windows releases...There's been some fodder about whether using 6.1 in the code is an indicator of the relevance of Windows 7. It is not. Windows 7 is a significant and evolutionary advancement of the client operating system. It is in every way a major effort in design, engineering and innovation. The only thing to read into the code versioning is that we are absolutely committed to making sure application compatibility is optimized for our customers.

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Insurance

Nov 18, 2008

Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of a guaranteed small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating loss. An insurer is a company selling the insurance. The insurance rate is a factor used to determine the amount, called the premium, to be charged for a certain amount of insurance coverage. Risk management, the practice of appraising and controlling risk, has evolved as a discrete field of study and practice.

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Principles of insurance

Commercially insurable risks typically share seven common characteristics.

  1. A large number of homogeneous exposure units. The vast majority of insurance policies are provided for individual members of very large classes. Automobile insurance, for example, covered about 175 million automobiles in the United States in 2004. The existence of a large number of homogeneous exposure units allows insurers to benefit from the so-called “law of large numbers,” which in effect states that as the number of exposure units increases, the actual results are increasingly likely to become close to expected results. There are exceptions to this criterion. Lloyd's of London is famous for insuring the life or health of actors, actresses and sports figures. Satellite Launch insurance covers events that are infrequent. Large commercial property policies may insure exceptional properties for which there are no ‘homogeneous’ exposure units. Despite failing on this criterion, many exposures like these are generally considered to be insurable.
  2. Definite Loss. The event that gives rise to the loss that is subject to insurance should, at least in principle, take place at a known time, in a known place, and from a known cause. The classic example is death of an insured person on a life insurance policy. Fire, automobile accidents, and worker injuries may all easily meet this criterion. Other types of losses may only be definite in theory. Occupational disease, for instance, may involve prolonged exposure to injurious conditions where no specific time, place or cause is identifiable. Ideally, the time, place and cause of a loss should be clear enough that a reasonable person, with sufficient information, could objectively verify all three elements.
  3. Accidental Loss. The event that constitutes the trigger of a claim should be fortuitous, or at least outside the control of the beneficiary of the insurance. The loss should be ‘pure,’ in the sense that it results from an event for which there is only the opportunity for cost. Events that contain speculative elements, such as ordinary business risks, are generally not considered insurable.
  4. Large Loss. The size of the loss must be meaningful from the perspective of the insured. Insurance premiums need to cover both the expected cost of losses, plus the cost of issuing and administering the policy, adjusting losses, and supplying the capital needed to reasonably assure that the insurer will be able to pay claims. For small losses these latter costs may be several times the size of the expected cost of losses. There is little point in paying such costs unless the protection offered has real value to a buyer.
  5. Affordable Premium. If the likelihood of an insured event is so high, or the cost of the event so large, that the resulting premium is large relative to the amount of protection offered, it is not likely that anyone will buy insurance, even if on offer. Further, as the accounting profession formally recognizes in financial accounting standards, the premium cannot be so large that there is not a reasonable chance of a significant loss to the insurer. If there is no such chance of loss, the transaction may have the form of insurance, but not the substance. (See the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board standard number 113)
  6. Calculable Loss. There are two elements that must be at least estimable, if not formally calculable: the probability of loss, and the attendant cost. Probability of loss is generally an empirical exercise, while cost has more to do with the ability of a reasonable person in possession of a copy of the insurance policy and a proof of loss associated with a claim presented under that policy to make a reasonably definite and objective evaluation of the amount of the loss recoverable as a result of the claim.
  7. Limited risk of catastrophically large losses. The essential risk is often aggregation. If the same event can cause losses to numerous policyholders of the same insurer, the ability of that insurer to issue policies becomes constrained, not by factors surrounding the individual characteristics of a given policyholder, but by the factors surrounding the sum of all policyholders so exposed. Typically, insurers prefer to limit their exposure to a loss from a single event to some small portion of their capital base, on the order of 5 percent. Where the loss can be aggregated, or an individual policy could produce exceptionally large claims, the capital constraint will restrict an insurer's appetite for additional policyholders. The classic example is earthquake insurance, where the ability of an underwriter to issue a new policy depends on the number and size of the policies that it has already underwritten. Wind insurance in hurricane zones, particularly along coast lines, is another example of this phenomenon. In extreme cases, the aggregation can affect the entire industry, since the combined capital of insurers and reinsurers can be small compared to the needs of potential policyholders in areas exposed to aggregation risk. In commercial fire insurance it is possible to find single properties whose total exposed value is well in excess of any individual insurer’s capital constraint. Such properties are generally shared among several insurers, or are insured by a single insurer who syndicates the risk into the reinsurance market.

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Indemnification

The technical definition of "indemnity" means to make whole again. There are two types of insurance contracts; 1) an "indemnity" policy and 2) a "pay on behalf" or "on behalf of" policy. The difference is significant on paper, but rarely material in practice.

An "indemnity" policy will never pay claims until the insured has paid out of pocket to some third party; for example, a visitor to your home slips on a floor that you left wet and sues you for $10,000 and wins. Under an "indemnity" policy the homeowner would have to come up with the $10,000 to pay for the visitor's fall and then would be "indemnified" by the insurance carrier for the out of pocket costs (the $10,000).

Under the same situation, a "pay on behalf" policy, the insurance carrier would pay the claim and the insured (the homeowner) would not be out of pocket for anything. Most modern liability insurance is written on the basis of "pay on behalf" language.

An entity seeking to transfer risk (an individual, corporation, or association of any type, etc.) becomes the 'insured' party once risk is assumed by an 'insurer', the insuring party, by means of a contract, called an insurance 'policy'. Generally, an insurance contract includes, at a minimum, the following elements: the parties (the insurer, the insured, the beneficiaries), the premium, the period of coverage, the particular loss event covered, the amount of coverage (i.e., the amount to be paid to the insured or beneficiary in the event of a loss), and exclusions (events not covered). An insured is thus said to be "indemnified" against the loss events covered in the policy.

When insured parties experience a loss for a specified peril, the coverage entitles the policyholder to make a 'claim' against the insurer for the covered amount of loss as specified by the policy. The fee paid by the insured to the insurer for assuming the risk is called the 'premium'. Insurance premiums from many insureds are used to fund accounts reserved for later payment of claims—in theory for a relatively few claimants—and for overhead costs. So long as an insurer maintains adequate funds set aside for anticipated losses (i.e., reserves), the remaining margin is an insurer's profit.

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Insurers' business model


Profit = earned premium + investment income - incurred loss - underwriting expenses.

Insurers make money in two ways: (1) through underwriting, the process by which insurers select the risks to insure and decide how much in premiums to charge for accepting those risks and (2) by investing the premiums they collect from insured parties.

The most complicated aspect of the insurance business is the underwriting of policies. Using a wide assortment of data, insurers predict the likelihood that a claim will be made against their policies and price products accordingly. To this end, insurers use actuarial science to quantify the risks they are willing to assume and the premium they will charge to assume them. Data is analyzed to fairly accurately project the rate of future claims based on a given risk. Actuarial science uses statistics and probability to analyze the risks associated with the range of perils covered, and these scientific principles are used to determine an insurer's overall exposure. Upon termination of a given policy, the amount of premium collected and the investment gains thereon minus the amount paid out in claims is the insurer's underwriting profit on that policy. Of course, from the insurer's perspective, some policies are winners (i.e., the insurer pays out less in claims and expenses than it receives in premiums and investment income) and some are losers (i.e., the insurer pays out more in claims and expenses than it receives in premiums and investment income).

An insurer's underwriting performance is measured in its combined ratio. The loss ratio (incurred losses and loss-adjustment expenses divided by net earned premium) is added to the expense ratio (underwriting expenses divided by net premium written) to determine the company's combined ratio. The combined ratio is a reflection of the company's overall underwriting profitability. A combined ratio of less than 100 percent indicates underwriting profitability, while anything over 100 indicates an underwriting loss.

Insurance companies also earn investment profits on “float”. “Float” or available reserve is the amount of money, at hand at any given moment, that an insurer has collected in insurance premiums but has not been paid out in claims. Insurers start investing insurance premiums as soon as they are collected and continue to earn interest on them until claims are paid out.

In the United States, the underwriting loss of property and casualty insurance companies was $142.3 billion in the five years ending 2003. But overall profit for the same period was $68.4 billion, as the result of float. Some insurance industry insiders, most notably Hank Greenberg, do not believe that it is forever possible to sustain a profit from float without an underwriting profit as well, but this opinion is not universally held. Naturally, the “float” method is difficult to carry out in an economically depressed period. Bear markets do cause insurers to shift away from investments and to toughen up their underwriting standards. So a poor economy generally means high insurance premiums. This tendency to swing between profitable and unprofitable periods over time is commonly known as the "underwriting" or insurance cycle. [6]

Property and casualty insurers currently make the most money from their auto insurance line of business. Generally better statistics are available on auto losses and underwriting on this line of business has benefited greatly from advances in computing. Additionally, property losses in the United States, due to natural catastrophes, have exacerbated this trend.

Finally, claims and loss handling is the materialized utility of insurance. In managing the claims-handling function, insurers seek to balance the elements of customer satisfaction, administrative handling expenses, and claims overpayment leakages. As part of this balancing act, fraudulent insurance practices are a major business risk that must be managed and overcome.

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History of insurance

In some sense we can say that insurance appears simultaneously with the appearance of human society. We know of two types of economies in human societies: money economies (with markets, money, financial instruments and so on) and non-money or natural economies (without money, markets, financial instruments and so on). The second type is a more ancient form than the first. In such an economy and community, we can see insurance in the form of people helping each other. For example, if a house burns down, the members of the community help build a new one. Should the same thing happen to one's neighbour, the other neighbours must help. Otherwise, neighbours will not receive help in the future. This type of insurance has survived to the present day in some countries where modern money economy with its financial instruments is not widespread (for example countries in the territory of the former Soviet Union).

Turning to insurance in the modern sense (i.e., insurance in a modern money economy, in which insurance is part of the financial sphere), early methods of transferring or distributing risk were practised by Chinese and Babylonian traders as long ago as the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, respectively. Chinese merchants travelling treacherous river rapids would redistribute their wares across many vessels to limit the loss due to any single vessel's capsizing. The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC, and practised by early Mediterranean sailing merchants. If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender's guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen.

Achaemenian monarchs of Iran were the first to insure their people and made it official by registering the insuring process in governmental notary offices. The insurance tradition was performed each year in Norouz (beginning of the Iranian New Year); the heads of different ethnic groups as well as others willing to take part, presented gifts to the monarch. The most important gift was presented during a special ceremony. When a gift was worth more than 10,000 Derrik (Achaemenian gold coin) the issue was registered in a special office. This was advantageous to those who presented such special gifts. For others, the presents were fairly assessed by the confidants of the court. Then the assessment was registered in special offices.

The purpose of registering was that whenever the person who presented the gift registered by the court was in trouble, the monarch and the court would help him. Jahez, a historian and writer, writes in one of his books on ancient Iran: "[W]henever the owner of the present is in trouble or wants to construct a building, set up a feast, have his children married, etc. the one in charge of this in the court would check the registration. If the registered amount exceeded 10,000 Derrik, he or she would receive an amount of twice as much."[1]

A thousand years later, the inhabitants of Rhodes invented the concept of the 'general average'. Merchants whose goods were being shipped together would pay a proportionally divided premium which would be used to reimburse any merchant whose goods were jettisoned during storm or sinkage.

The Greeks and Romans introduced the origins of health and life insurance c. 600 AD when they organized guilds called "benevolent societies" which cared for the families and paid funeral expenses of members upon death. Guilds in the Middle Ages served a similar purpose. The Talmud deals with several aspects of insuring goods. Before insurance was established in the late 17th century, "friendly societies" existed in England, in which people donated amounts of money to a general sum that could be used for emergencies.

Separate insurance contracts (i.e., insurance policies not bundled with loans or other kinds of contracts) were invented in Genoa in the 14th century, as were insurance pools backed by pledges of landed estates. These new insurance contracts allowed insurance to be separated from investment, a separation of roles that first proved useful in marine insurance. Insurance became far more sophisticated in post-Renaissance Europe, and specialized varieties developed.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, London's growing importance as a centre for trade increased demand for marine insurance. In the late 1680s, Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house that became a popular haunt of ship owners, merchants, and ships’ captains, and thereby a reliable source of the latest shipping news. It became the meeting place for parties wishing to insure cargoes and ships, and those willing to underwrite such ventures. Today, Lloyd's of London remains the leading market (note that it is not an insurance company) for marine and other specialist types of insurance, but it works rather differently than the more familiar kinds of insurance.

Insurance as we know it today can be traced to the Great Fire of London, which in 1666 devoured 13,200 houses. In the aftermath of this disaster, Nicholas Barbon opened an office to insure buildings. In 1680, he established England's first fire insurance company, "The Fire Office," to insure brick and frame homes.

The first insurance company in the United States underwrote fire insurance and was formed in Charles Town (modern-day Charleston), South Carolina, in 1732. Benjamin Franklin helped to popularize and make standard the practice of insurance, particularly against fire in the form of perpetual insurance. In 1752, he founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin's company was the first to make contributions toward fire prevention. Not only did his company warn against certain fire hazards, it refused to insure certain buildings where the risk of fire was too great, such as all wooden houses. In the United States, regulation of the insurance industry is highly Balkanized, with primary responsibility assumed by individual state insurance departments. Whereas insurance markets have become centralized nationally and internationally, state insurance commissioners operate individually, though at times in concert through a national insurance commissioners' organization. In recent years, some have called for a dual state and federal regulatory system (commonly referred to as the Optional Federal Charter (OFC)) for insurance similar to that which oversees state banks and national banks.

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Types of insurance

Nov 17, 2008

Any risk that can be quantified can potentially be insured. Specific kinds of risk that may give rise to claims are known as "perils". An insurance policy will set out in detail which perils are covered by the policy and which are not. Below are (non-exhaustive) lists of the many different types of insurance that exist. A single policy may cover risks in one or more of the categories set out below. For example, auto insurance would typically cover both property risk (covering the risk of theft or damage to the car) and liability risk (covering legal claims from causing an accident). A homeowner's insurance policy in the U.S. typically includes property insurance covering damage to the home and the owner's belongings, liability insurance covering certain legal claims against the owner, and even a small amount of coverage for medical expenses of guests who are injured on the owner's property.

Business insurance can be any kind of insurance that protects businesses against risks. Some principal subtypes of business insurance are (a) the various kinds of professional liability insurance, also called professional indemnity insurance, which are discussed below under that name; and (b) the business owner's policy (BOP), which bundles into one policy many of the kinds of coverage that a business owner needs, in a way analogous to how homeowners insurance bundles the coverages that a homeowner needs.

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Auto insurance

Auto insurance protects you against financial loss if you have an accident. It is a contract between you and the insurance company. You agree to pay the premium and the insurance company agrees to pay your losses as defined in your policy. Auto insurance provides property, liability and medical coverage: (1) Property coverage pays for damage to or theft of your car. (2) Liability coverage pays for your legal responsibility to others for bodily injury or property damage. and (3) Medical coverage pays for the cost of treating injuries, rehabilitation and sometimes lost wages and funeral expenses. An auto insurance policy is comprised of six different kinds of coverage. Most states require you to buy some, but not all, of these coverages. If you're financing a car, your lender may also have requirements.

Most auto policies are for six months to a year. Your insurance company should notify you by mail when it’s time to renew the policy and to pay your premium

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Home insurance

What is homeowners insurance?

Homeowners insurance provides financial protection against disasters. A standard policy insures the home itself and the things you keep in it.

Homeowners insurance is a package policy. This means that it covers both damage to your property and your liability or legal responsibility for any injuries and property damage you or members of your family cause to other people. This includes damage caused by household pets.

Damage caused by most disasters is covered but there are exceptions. The most significant are damage caused by floods, earthquakes and poor maintenance. You must buy two separate policies for flood and earthquake coverage. Maintenance-related problems are the homeowners' responsibility.

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Health

Health insurance policies by the National Health Service in the United Kingdom (NHS) or other publicly-funded health programs will cover the cost of medical treatments. Dental insurance, like medical insurance, is coverage for individuals to protect them against dental costs. In the U.S., dental insurance is often part of an employer's benefits package, along with health insurance. Most countries rely on public funding to ensure that all citizens have universal access to health care.

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